Let's Build a Compiler (1988) | Hacker News Reader

Let's Build a Compiler (1988)

compilers.iecc.com

124 pointsibobev15 comments

It seems that in many compiler resources (even the modern ones), there is still a lot of focus on the front-end—things like lexing, parsing, DFAs, regex matching, recursive descent.

I would like to see greater focus on the back-end: optimisation strategies like dead code elimination, register allocation, parallelisation, vectorisation, detecting SIMD-able code, and even whole-program optimisation.

Even on the front-end, it would be nice to see focus on the failure cases—printing nicely formatted error messages, for instance.

IMO these are strictly larger contributors to the quality of a compiler suite than merely lexing and parsing, which are generally solved problems.

I bit of biography on Jack Crenshaw. Among many other things he worked on the Apollo program.

https://www.resonancepub.com/jack-crenshaw/

He is indeed a very interesting character, with an actual personality.

Thanks for the link. It was a very interesting interview to read.

A rendered Markdown version of this book is available here: https://xmonader.github.io/letsbuildacompiler-pretty/

A port of the tutorial's Pascal code to C which emits x86 assembly:

https://github.com/lotabout/Let-s-build-a-compiler

C and AT&T syntax... because it's not Real Programming™ unless there's cryptic symbols everywhere, everyone today knows that of course! [/s]

And then there is some weirdly phrased misinformation in the readme about how on modern OSes you have to link to libraries - this simply isn't true, at least on Linux. A static 32-bit binary using either 'int 80h' or 'syscall' instructions will even run on "pure" x64 systems (i.e. ones with no 32-bit libs installed at all).

The only thing this adds is the translated code, and this dubious information about x86 programming, the text of the tutorial itself is unchanged. So I don't see this providing any value except to those people who absolutely refuse to read Pascal code.

To anyone who wants a similar bottom-up (but somewhat more advanced) compiler tutorial using C, maybe read this one instead: https://github.com/DoctorWkt/acwj

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A great tutorial for its time.

It's been a while I saw it.

compiler writing is always a journey apparently....

> "In the four years since installment fourteen, I've managed to get laid off, get divorced, have a nervous breakdown, begin a new career as a writer, begin another one as a consultant, move, work on two real-time systems, and raise fourteen baby birds, three pigeons, six possums, and a duck. For awhile there, the parsing of source code was not high" on my list of priorities.

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